Thailand Trip!

Greetings from Thailand!

We have now been in Thailand for five days! On Monday April 27th,

Maren and I flew from Taiwan to Bangkok, leaving the professor to work on preparing for his Tuesday and Wednesday classes at National Sun Yat-Sen University! We were greeted by Oi, a wonderfully kind, elegantly dressed and phenomenally well organized AFS worker, and her handsome husband Mr X at the airport! We went to the residence apartment where we will stay and went to bed!

On Day 2, April 28th, we proceeded to sightsee some of Bangkok's most beautiful sights. The first was a short tram ride around the center of town, followed by visiting the magnificent Grand Palace. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted all the photos of our first day and a half in the city, so I await a disc from one of Oi's AFS volunteers, Sue-Porn , a lovely tiny Thai gal (who has two grown children: absolutely impossible to believe!)who accompanied us both of our days in Bangkok and was terrific at snapping photos!

The Grand Palace is a dazzling architectural complex, containing temples (wats), royal living quarters of the past kings, governmental offices, and ,most importantly to Thai culture, the Emerald Buddha.; the Emerald Buddha is made of jade but so-called emerald because of its rich color. It is regarded as the most sacred Buddhist temple in Thailand. The Emerald Buddha sits atop an 11 meter tall gilded altar,pfrotected by a nine-tiered umbrella. Though small in size, it is highly revered.

The palace itself is reserved for major ceremonial functions,though in the past, kings did reside there.

We also toured the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, which has an enormous, totally gilded reclining Buddha , 46 meters long and 15 meters high (translate, someone?). It is made of cement brick but is totally covered in gold leaf! The soles of its feet are inlaid with beautiful mother-of-pearl!

Hardly stopping to breathe, we went to yet another temple, the Temple of the Dawn, again ornately brilliant in gold, shaped like a huge stupa and surrounded, in fact, by four smaller stupas (conical shaped structures that in the former times might have housed Buddha statues,etc). We declined to climb all the way to the top, and were quite content by then (late afternoon) to enjoy the views of Bangkok from the second level. This temple is known for its 70 meter high pagoda decorated with mosaics of Chinese porcelain. The workmanship and artistry of these temples are really fantastic.

We ended this first day's sightseeing with a visit to the temple known as Wat Pho, the temple of a past king, King Rama II (Current king is Rama IX). \While there, we even enjoyed a 45 minute Thai foot massage! Wow! It as good but ,for me, too hard. I was wincing at times with the pressure applied. But , my feet and legs feel fine now!

As if all that amazing touring was not enough to give us a feel for this city with its astonishingly ornate and beautiful architecture, we were royally treated by another wonderful AFS family, Jum, her husband Chang, and their two teenaged children, Gret (son, aged 15?) and Gift (daughter, aged 17?) to a fabulous dinner cruise along the Chai Phraya River (also known as the River of Kings)which gracefully snakes from the north of Thailand and ends in Bangkok. It is considered to be a major source of Thai history, as we saw along its banks, many of the palaces and temples we had visited during the day, all of which date to different eras. Additionally, we sailed right under the Memorial Bridge, which is a "double-leaf bascule" steel structure, built on the occasion of King Rama VII's celebrating the city's 150th anniversary. Joining us were Oi, her husband Mr X, Sue-Porn, plus another friendly and very busy AFS worker named Jiap, whom we also loved!

We retired to the nearby apartment residential hotel for a welcome, air-conditioned sleep.